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Traceability through serialization

Reduce counterfeiting - increase consumer information

The ability to trace individual products through the supply chain is becoming increasingly important to fight counterfeiting and increase consumer safety. This applies to the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, tobacco as well as to the food & beverage industries.

While traditional lot and batch level traceability provides a level of supply chain risk management, serialization provides item-level traceability. This means individual items can be traced from manufacture, right through distribution and retail to end consumer use. Among the many benefits this includes ensuring individual items are authentic and whether they have been distributed via legitimate channels.

There are two main challenges to achieve a comprehensive traceability through serialization solution:

Managing the data internally, with supply chain partners, and with the consumer oriented servers

Changing the production hardware and processes.

To meet these challenges two main ‘philosophies’ have arisen to deal with the new data management and production process demands - the single-system point-to-point (closed single supplier) solution or the flexible ‘layer’ solution. By separating data handling from the production line, the flexible layer solution brings numerous systems benefits.

The basics: what you need to know about traceability

Changing legal requirements and increased demand by consumers and producers to provide more information on an individual product level, drive an increasing demand for the implementation of track & trace solutions in production and packaging lines in the Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, Tobacco, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage industry.

The single-system point-to-point solution (closed single supplier solution) for serialisation is promoted as ready-to-use systems that fulfill all requirements from printing, inspection, data handling and exchange with the supply chain and government servers.

With the goal of fighting the immense market of counterfeit products, several initiatives and legislative measures have been taken or are in the process of being implemented around the world, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.

White papers

Discover how inspection systems with pharmaceutical application packages can integrate serialized codes into ERP systems. And, how all other inspection tasks can be set up in one system accessible via one interface.

How did a contract manufacturer supply 1,000,000 serialized packages for multiple pharmaceutical customers with varying standards and procedures… and within a network of multiple production sites, contract manufacturers, re-packers and other service providers – and all according to the expected EU regulations to centrally register all the unique codes?

Kraus Machinenbau, who produce specialised equipment for printing and packaging industries, have developed the FK Codingline system, which verifies the track/trace codes that must be printed on packaging for food and pharmaceuticals, in line with increasingly stringent international regulations.

Read how an Omron large-sized touch-screen monitor provide an operator interface through which the entire highly technical process of 2D code printing was controlled and checked as part of the pharmaceutical packaging process.

Need support?

Take the next step in your serialization solution layout, implementation or upgrade. Contact us at any stage of your serialization implementation process - from concept studies and first pilots to complete stations in your lines. You can also benefit from our experiences with integration in new machines and upgrade cycles. Contact us today.

Related topics

05 Apr
We have joined the OPC group Open Serialisation Communication Standard (Open SCS) with the goal to standardise the communication interfaces between the different solution providers who provide solutions for the various global serialisation requirements.